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does not have to be rehearsed here.1 We need to emphasize that not all Greek views agreed with the notion that the immortal soul separates from the body, though that is the innovation normally attributed to Greek authorship. Then too, we have already seen that in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Israel there is a “shade” or “shadow” that separates from the body at death, sometimes several different formulations of that continuing identity. So the concept that the soul can survive death is not precisely an innovation of Greek thought. What is an innovation is a radical dualism in which the immortality of the soul was seen to be provable, beatific, and the natural goal of existence. That was an innovation of Plato’s philosophy.

It is an innovation with a history. Throughout Greek history there are reports of people of unusual religious talent, whom we might want to call shamans (after their counterparts in Central Asia) or sorcerers, who were able to leave their bodies while still alive and perform various services-like earthly or heavenly travel, healings, or divinations. Greeks who were supposed to have these talents included: Orpheus (mythical), Trophonius (mythical), Aristeas of Proconessus (early seventh century BCE), Hermotimus of Clazomenae (seventh century BCE?), Epimenides of Cnossus or Phaestus (ca. 600 BCE), Pythagoras of Samos (530s-520s BCE), Abaris the Hyperborean (sixth century BCE), Zalmoxis of the Thracian Getae (sixth century BCE), and Empedocles of Acragas (ca. 485-435 BCE).2 The figures are legendary and often cannot be dated accurately. Furthermore, Greek myth also contains cautionary tales against heavenly journeys as the famous stories of Phaethon and Icarus demonstrate.

Here is the cautionary tale of Hermotimus of Clazomenae from the report of Apollonius’ Historiae Mirabiles 3:

They say his [Hermotimus’] soul would wander from his body and stay away for many years. Visiting places, it would predict what was going to happen-for example, torrential rains or droughts, and in addition earthquakes and pestilences and the suchlike. His body would just lie there, and after an interval his soul would return to it, as if to its shell, and arouse it. He did this frequently, and whenever he was about to go on his travels he gave his wife the order that no one, citizen or anyone, should touch his body. But some people came into the house, prevailed upon his wife and observed Hermotimus lying on the floor, naked and motionless. They brought fire and burned him, in the belief that, when the soul came back and no longer had anything to reenter, he would be completely deprived of life. This is exactly what happened. The people of Clazomenae honor Hermotimus even to this day and have [built] a temple to him. Women may not enter it for the reason above [i.e., the wife’s betrayal].3

The story is legendary, serving as the foundation story of a temple. But many Greeks believed that the soul could naturally depart from its body, not just in death, but also in life. This property of the soul, which could be exploited by religious entrepreneurs, demonstrated that the soul traveled to the afterlife at death. Eventually, these stories were taken as evidence for the immortality of the soul and the desirability of religiously altered states of consciousness.

Early Greek Beliefs and Burial Practices

WE MUST FOLLOW the story as chronologically as possible so we will begin with the Homeric epics. The texts of the Homeric Greeks and the archeological evidence of the earliest periods suggest that there was no strict reward for a heroic or moral life. The Isles of the Blessed (e.g., Hesiod ca. 730 BCE, Works and Days) and Elysian fields (Odyssey 4.561ff.) were occasionally open to the most valiant heroes in the ancient period. Menelaus is told that he will go to the Elysian Plain, as much because of the loss of honor he suffered in the rape of his wife Helen as for his stature as King of Sparta. Interestingly, neither “Elysion” nor “Radamanthys” (the ruler of the dead), appear to be native Greek terms.

As every student who still